The makers and bottlers of wine need to ensure the quality of the cork stoppers they use to seal the bottles and protect the contents until it reaches the consumer. The corks need to be of high quality woods and are typically cut from the bark of oak trees. The corks themselves, may come with inherent imperfections in color or even holes.
The effects of holes in the cork are not acceptable to the wine makers because it can lead to a lower quality bottle of wine. However, discolorations in the cork itself may be acceptable to the bottler. As a way to separate discolored from damaged (corks with holes) bottlers have been using a life of automated systems that utilize three dimensional imaging that inspects the various cork stoppers as well as the disks that are used in the construction of the cork stoppers. The system can inspect up to 25,000 disks per hour and with a higher accuracy than found with human inspectors.
How does it work?
The cork disks need to be oriented on the conveyor so they can be imaged by the vision system technology. The cork disks are fed into a rotating bowl feeder where individual parts are transferred along to the linear conveyor. After the disks are separated, they are imaged by the 3D imaging vision system which illuminates the parts and captures the reflected light from the corks. The camera snaps the image as each cork disk passes through a fiber optic sensor.
The system captures and analyzes the color image of the disk and searches for defects from holes or discoloration or incorrect sizes. The disks are then pulled from the line and separated into various classifications that include – good, but usable, bad and not usable, and others still that may be able to be resized and ultimately used.
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